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Titanian Commonwealth 1e
Main Stations: Titan Memes: Technosocialism, Cyberdemocracy Titan was originally settled in the late 21st century by a European academic consortium, making it the only major body in the system colonized primarily by non-hypercorp interests. The social organization of Titan is rooted partly in the Scandinavian social democracies of Earth and partly in the open economy. On one hand, citizens of the Titanian Commonwealth eschew the use of currency for mundane needs, participating in the reputation economy used by much of the outer system. On the other, upon reaching the age of majority, citizens of Titan agree to a literal social contract. A portion of their economic productivity is quantized as social money, which is then tithed to microcorp-administered social projects such as gateless interstellar exploration, physics research, neuroscience, developing mental health memes, defense, public resleeving, and habitat construction. The monetary unit used for this purpose, the Titanian Kroner, is currently pegged to the common market price of a terabyte of qubits. Unlike old Earth socialist regimes, there are no state monopolies and no central planning. Anyone able to garner enough votes in the Plurality (the Titanian cyberdemocracy) can start a social money-funded microcorp and compete with other microcorps. Microcorps are owned by the Commonwealth, and profits are disposed of by the Plurality. Microcorps are required to be transparent as administrative entities, and the Plurality votes on whether to transfer discoveries to the open source domain. Regulatory matters are handled by AI and AGI bureaucrats (red tape still exists, but it doesn’t slow things down … much). The main reward for individuals in this system is rep. Titanians who invest a lot of time or resources in a given field gain rep rewards for doing so. = Government = Titan is a parliamentary direct cyberdemocracy. The Constitution of the Commonwealth establishes a legislative branch composed of the entire adult population, an elected executive branch to administer the government, and an elected judiciary to arbitrate interpretation of the law. The constitution also includes a comprehensive declaration of transhuman rights and a few ground rules for governance, such as the order in which cabinet ministers must be elected. The Plurality The Commonwealth’s legislative branch is the Plurality (also called either Alþing or Pluralitet in Skandinavíska), a tightly monitored public forum and voting system operated by the Ministry of Information. Every citizen past the age of majority may cast votes when the Plurality is in session. Except during emergencies, sessions occur weekly, although debate on issues goes on constantly. Most Titanians rely heavily on their muses to track issues in which they’re interested, research proposed legislation, and remind them when it’s time to vote on a given issue. The average Titanian votes at least twice a week, encouraged in part by publicly available statistics on every voter’s level of participation in votes and forums and the loss of reputation sometimes suffered by unengaged voters. Political Parties and Elections Titanian law severely restricts the activities of political parties. While voting blocs can and do emerge in the Plurality, using a party organization to channel social money or reputation for the purpose of swaying actions of the Plurality is illegal. In practical terms, Titanian political parties only exist during ministerial elections. Prior to the elections, everyone who wishes to participate in the vote must declare for a party. Anyone may create and register a party, but in order to nominate candidates for ofﬁce, a party must represent at least 1% of the electorate. Once parties are formed, the Plurality tallies their sizes to determine the number of ministerial posts each party may hold at the end of the election. For example, the Social Democrats, currently making up 40% of the electorate, are allowed at most ﬁve ministries. After the tallying of party size comes much debate and strategizing, followed by nomination of candidates and primary elections. A party may decide to put forward no candidate for a given post, conceding that post to other parties. They may also form coalitions, casting votes for another party’s candidate. Elections are held every four years, though the Prime Minister has the power to dissolve government and call for elections sooner. Elections take place one post at a time, starting with the Prime Minister. The order in which ministers are elected is prescribed by the constitution and may only be altered if a new ministry is added or the portfolio of an extant ministry changes substantially. In each round of elections, the candidate with the most votes (not a majority, but simply the most votes) wins that post. However, once a given party has elected its maximum number of ministers, its membership may no longer vote in subsequent elections (hence the practice of putting forward no candidate in a given election and either supporting another party or abstaining altogether). It would be possible in this system for a party to split into numerous splinter parties and effectively take more than its share of posts, but the judiciary closely monitors party formation and may declare that a given party lacks credibility if it looks as if its formation is an attempt to game the election system. Cabinet and Ministries Day-to-day governance of the Commonwealth falls to the Prime Minister and a cabinet representing the twelve current ministries. One never knows when the Ministry of Infrastructure or the Ministry of Education might prove pivotal in a Firewall assignment, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll discuss the ministries with which sentinels are most likely to interact. Ministry of State Aside from running Titan’s offworld embassies and conducting diplomacy, State operates the Civilian Intelligence Directorate. CID doesn’t run ops on its own. Rather, its mission is to recruit, train, and support civilian intelligence specialists, most of whom are analysts and cryptographers. Actual command of operations falls to Fleet Intelligence. Ministry of Defense The Titanian Commonwealth Fleet, Marines, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine fall under the Defense Ministry. Fleet is Titan’s air force and space navy, as well as the service in charge of the planet’s orbital defense grid. Fleet Intelligence, supplemented by civilians from the CID, is Titan’s primary foreign intelligence service. The Marines are Titan’s ground and infantry force; we have no separate army. The Coast Guard, responsible for patrolling Titan’s hydrocarbon lakes, is the only surface naval force in the solar system. The Merchant Marine is a semi-militarized ﬂeet of microcorp-operated traders and support ships. Defense also regulates but doesn’t directly control the militias of the three major Titanian cities. Jens Møller, the current Minister of Defense, came to government after a highly decorated career in Fleet that saw him rise to the rank of Chief Air Marshal. Møller arrived during the First Settlement. Initially a hardline supporter of establishing a protectorate over the anarchists, he changed his position after the Locus Conﬂict. I can’t say I’ve ever felt warmly toward the man. He’s a strange ﬁt with politics, but he’s as good as one could hope for in a soldier. He and his wife, a prominent medical researcher and also an early settler, have a modern relationship; both are frequently seen about Nyhavn with younger companions. Fleet Intelligence (and by extension, the CID) is aware of Firewall. While not necessarily hostile toward Firewall, they have wide latitude in dealing with the organization, particularly outside of Titanian jurisdiction (on planet, Firewall agents must be handed over to the Security Police). Several months ago, a Fleet Intel agent on Extropia approached someone they correctly believed to be a Firewall sentinel and showed the sentinel their reports on a number of recent Firewall missions, including the incident aboard the scum barge Ecstatic Metamorphosis. The agent politely suggested that the sentinel convey to her superiors Fleet’s compliments—along with a warning not to overstep themselves where Titanian citizens or military assets are concerned. As long as Fleet continues to observe their policy of destroying TITAN military equipment wherever found, I don’t see this as a problem. If only more of my colleagues on Mars and out in the Kuiper Belt agreed. Ministry of Justice and Equality This ministry oversees the planet-wide Commonwealth Police, the Security Police (Titan’s domestic intelligence service), the Judicial Police (security at court and penal facilities), and the Special Section on Transhuman Rights (tasked with ensuring equal treatment for pods, synths, uplifts, and AGIs). Hackers accustomed to watching in amusement as Martian police infosec specialists chase their tails, be warned: Titanian law allows the police to freely recruit infomorphs, most of whom are quite zealous in pursuing their duties. I’ve had to pull strings for more than one sentinel team after their hacker underestimated the Commonwealth Police. Another complication for sentinels is that the Security Police, or at least their upper echelons, are aware of Firewall. While sympathetic toward many of Firewall’s goals, the police remain police. Sentinels identiﬁed as such should expect to be extensively debriefed, at minimum. Fortunately, no Firewall operations planet-side on Titan to date have resulted in major damage or loss of life. I hope to keep it that way. The current Justice Minister is Nadifa Samakab Geeddi, a diaspora-era Danish settler of Somali descent. Geeddi was a lawyer for many years before entering government, prompting a number of fox/henhouse quips at her election. Sidebar: Nadifa Geeddi Geeddi’s worse than a fox. She’s a wolf at the door. Geeddi was Victoire Gagnon’s counsel for years before stepping into the limelight herself, which means she’s a committed member of the Technosocialist Interplanetary, no matter how much she downplays the connection publicly. Oh, she’s got a lighter touch than inner system security forces. The Security Police don’t go for bundling people off in vans; ain’t their style. But you can be damned sure that she’s using her position to keep tabs on anyone who’s prominent in the A-Bloc. Offworlders big into autonomist politics, be warned: you’ll be watched here. —Balthazar Grimes, A-Bloc dissident Ministry of Science The Science Ministry operates roughly a dozen institutes and administrations devoted to basic research, including the Institute of Health and Transmortality, the Commonwealth Physics Institute, and the Space Exploration Administration. It also coordinates research efforts among universities, enforces research transparency at microcorps, and ensures security of scientiﬁc sites through the Commonwealth Science Police. The current Minister of Science is Pedro Transﬁnity of the Pirat party, the ﬁrst AGI ever elected to government. The Ministry of Science is of interest to Firewall because it has not always been uniform in its approach to dealing with TITAN artifacts and alien technology. This ministry is involved, with Fleet, in investigating the TITAN matrioshka brain project at Iapetus. Science also includes the Institute of Xenoplanetology, which has returned a number of alien artifacts to Titan after safety screenings that were less than hermetic. Ministry of Biodevelopment Aside from habitat biosphere development and public health, this ministry’s largest concern is administering Titan’s massive public resleeving program. Biodevelopment regulates the dozen or so microcorps that design and grow morphs in the sprawling bodyworks of New Quebec. This ministry has regularly been plagued by charges of low-level corruption due to the heavy involvement of various criminal syndicates in the morph industry. The current minister, Marcus Mackenzie, is viewed as a white knight—but he’ll have a tough job ahead of him when he starts cleaning house. Titan’s One Body per Mind policy means that Biodevelopment enforces massive production quotas for standard-model hazer morphs. Synthmorphs are rare on Titan. Even in occupations that require a synth, it’s far more common for a user in a biomorph to operate them by telepresence. The sheer number of morphs produced represents an irresistible opportunity for crime syndicates. The notorious St. Catherine Tong, the ID Crew, the Night Cartel, and numerous local gangs have ﬁngers in Biodevelopment’s operations. Judiciary Judges and magistrates serve ﬁve-year terms and may not belong to political parties. The full Plurality votes for individual judges. Most citizens use their muses to collate a list of judges whose past ﬁndings accord with their preferences. Counties and Municipalities Titan is divided into fourteen counties and three municipalities (the three big cities: New Quebec, Aarhus, and Nyhavn). Titanian law limits the scope of local governments. The Prime Minister appoints a governor to each county and municipality, but they must be ratiﬁed by Plurality voters living in the area. The main function of local governors is to train, equip, and command local militias. Every citizen must perform three years of civil service upon reaching the age of majority (currently set at twenty-ﬁve for cognitive baseline humans, although the law provides for drafting younger citizens in time of war). Most serve in one of the branches of the military. Titan’s readiness in the event of a TITAN attack is exceptional, equaled only by the ultimates, Jovians, and some anarchist polities. Upon completing service, all citizens are required to keep militia gear in their home and qualify annually with their weapon. The standard militia armament is effective against human infantry but optimized for ﬁghting hostile machine life: an assault riﬂe with meshed sights and status interfaces but manual control interfaces. Militia riﬂes are equipped with smart magazines ﬁring standard, armor-piercing, and jammer rounds. Militia members also receive a suit of body armor and a commlink. It is illegal to take militia gear out of storage unless the militia is called up, the militia member is actively training, or a clear and present civic emergency arises. Exceptions are also made in cases of self defense. Violent criminals have their militia status revoked. Designated nano-warfare specialists are additionally equipped with military-grade nanobot countermeasures. The Plurality has stopped short of allowing heavier weaponry, although it was considered in the aftermath of the Fall. = Sociopolitical Movements = Planetary Consortium media feeds propagate a view of Titanians as austere intellectuals living in voluntary poverty, perhaps noble in their intentions, yet hopelessly naïve and stubbornly hostile toward progress. This viliﬁcation glosses over the dense complexities of political and economic life in the Commonwealth. Participation in cyberdemocracy, a preference for consensus over conﬂict, and respect for Janteloven (the old Scandinavian ideal of self-effacing egalitarianism) are all powerful memes. But sixty million people can’t agree on everything. A-Bloc Dozens of anarchist groups exist on Titan, most of them peopled by youthful agitators chaﬁng under the constraints of a state that was entrenched well before they were born. Of these, only the A-Bloc possesses any credibility (or poses much threat, depending on whom one asks). The A-Bloc is a confederation of anarcho-communist groups from around the planet who seek the establishment of permanent autonomist enclaves in undeveloped regions of Titan. They have been unable to garner sufﬁcient support for this project, despite a few surprise election victories that have resulted in anarchist cabinet ministers. Their leader is Anatole Mok, whose Faction Noire de Titan (FNT) is most active in New Quebec. Mok served as Minister of Biodevelopment—capably, I’ll allow—for a year at one point. He campaigned on a populist platform of greater emphasis on public resleeving programs and trait upgrades to existing publicly funded morphs. In recent years, A-Bloc has veered toward brinkmanship, voting in a way intended to destabilize the Plurality. They’ve succeeded mostly in exacerbating tensions between other factions and decreasing support for their own proposals. This is unfortunate for Commonwealth-anarchist relations and worrying to those who support continued military entente with Locus and the Autonomist Alliance. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Mok is an agent-provocateur in the pay of the Planetary Consortium. I don’t credit this conspiracy theory, as Mok is far too public a ﬁgure for the alleged Consortium ties to have escaped scrutiny, but many do. That said, I wouldn’t expect to see him in cabinet again any time soon. Hulder It might come as a surprise that anyone could live as a nomad on Titan, but there are stranger things in the solar system. The hulder do, though, ranging the dunes and gritty plains of the Titanian wilds, prospecting for exotic chemicals, and keeping herds of Titanian caribou. Their morphs are biological on the inside, derived from homo neanderthalensis, but from without they resemble a long-legged, barrel-chested great auk in a hard suit. They’re easily mistaken for synths. Their sure-footed caribou, similarly armored, dwell in an AR hallucination of Earth’s tundra, their instinct to graze on grasses and lichens translated by chemical sniffers into a continual hunt for carbonaceous compounds, which fractal ﬁngers and intakes in their exterior muzzles then harvest. The hulder themselves partake in this illusion only when resting from their labors. The rest of their time is spent watching over the herd, building windbreaks, making complex ice carvings that are prized by art collectors, and doing knowledge work via their mesh inserts. The hulder, though physically reclusive, participate actively in the Plurality and operate several microcorps. Not surprisingly, they’re ﬁerce preservationists. Hulder and caribou physiology is highly complex and relies heavily on nanotech. The herd and their transhuman companions depend upon each other; periodic link-ups to communal chemical reservoirs and makers are needed to balance out individuals’ chemical reserves. This system is not 100% self-sufﬁcient, requiring roughly annual visits to nearby settlements to replenish a herd’s chemical reserves. The hulder, while not inimical to other transhumans like the exhumans, should probably be watched more carefully than Firewall has the resources to do at present. Their extreme reliance on nanotech and their physical isolation make them ideal hosts for the exovirus. A hulder exsurgent with a herd of caribou could accomplish some terrifying feats of organic engineering with little danger of being observed. Mutualist and Free Market Movement The Extropian branch of anarchism has its proponents in the Plurality, and there is even a Free Market party that espouses moving the economy toward inner-system hypercapitalism. Neither movement has many adherents, but coalitions and protest votes mean that one or the other party occasionally elects a minister to government. Oligarchs When I was a young man, before shipping out to Titan, I frequented the bars in Oslo that played Beijing gang metal. If you’re old enough to remember the style, I had the anti-facial recognition tattoos, the choppy hair and fur coat—the whole package. I prefer not to think about how many drugs we pumped into our bodies the night after my team was chosen for the Titan expedition. All of which is to say, I cherish my memories of youthful rebellion, even when I ﬁnd them embarrassing. Regarding the oligarchs: my hope is that they’re just going through a phase. Their elaborate costumes are pure youth culture: tight white leather, codpieces and shoulder pads, glittering jewelry, and morphs sculpted to appear starved even by hazer standards. Their argot is full of Slavic loan words (they call themselves oligarhov) and peppered with diminutives that sound like baby talk. Their penchant for huge, sleek cars on a world where getting around is best done by microlight or personal wings is a strange, wasteful affectation. These youths are of voting age, however, and they represent a challenge to our tidy system of state entitlements and public capital. They argue ﬁercely, if inexpertly, for a system with fewer checks on how individuals use their earnings. They charge the older generation with fostering inertsii—economic inertia. They’re the ﬂip side to the A-Bloc, agitators for Martian capitalism and glittering excess. Interestingly, they’re ﬁercely opposed to the mutualist camp of anarchism. They want ownership, with a legal framework that entitles it, not red markets or contract law administered by a freelance judiciary. They further argue that Titan should expand and absorb its autonomist neighbors, and rail angrily against transfer of Titanian “intellectual property” to anarchist microfacturers. What they’re really up against is not the Plurality and the microcorp system, but Titanian culture. I’m sure for many of them, both the clothes and the political opinions are just fashion, part of the constant youthful hunt for sex partners. But in reading a few of the oligarch diatribes to the Plurality, and in talking with students who identify with this culture, I detect a keen intelligence stretching in its sleep of which I am wary. Could our own youth eventually change the Commonwealth in a direction the Planetary Consortium cannot? Pirat Party The Pirat party has been a voting bloc in the Plurality from its inception. A direct descendant of Earth’s transnational Pirate parties, the Piraten advocate for government transparency, freedom of information, and economic openness. While they’ve never been a majority party, “intellectual property is theft” remains a powerful meme in the Commonwealth. They constitute a key swing vote in many elections and an important coalition partner for other parties. Preservationists Titan can never be terraformed in the usual sense. We’re too far from the sun, and too much of our world consists of ices and liquids that would be lost to the void over the long run if our world warmed substantially. The thin haze of our atmosphere is a tenuous thing on a world with so little gravity, and terraforming would disrupt the processes that replenish it. And then there is the matter of Saturn’s magnetosphere. We spend much of the short Titanian year orbiting through Saturn’s magnetotail. Without our dense atmosphere, the surface radiation dose would be intolerable. Nevertheless, the issue of launching some type of terraforming effort surfaces regularly in the Plurality, and the preservationists are its primary opponents. The other issue of major interest to Preservationists is exploitation of resources. Draining methane lakes and excavating the carbon dunes could have long term consequences for our planetary climate. Not surprisingly, how serious those consequences are depends on whose simulations one looks at. The preservationist mandate is a very different thing on Titan than in other parts of the system. With no life to protect, it may come as a surprise that Titan has any preservationist movement, but we Titanians live in a hard-won accord with the harsh climate of our planet. Upsetting the balance could have tragic consequences in the long run. Moreover, the Titanian wilds are precious to those of us who’ve learned to love the strange beauty of ice dunes and methane lakes. With the loss of Earth, beauty is something of which transhumanity can never have too much. Social Democrats The center party in Commonwealth politics, the Social Democrats comprise most of the electorate and stand for the current Titanian status quo. The social democratic way is an attempt to balance state ownership with some of the beneﬁts gained from market capitalism through the microcorp system. Socialists The socialists are Titan’s left-wing statist party. They form the second largest voting bloc in the Plurality. Their key differences from the Social Democrats are on microcorp policy and foreign affairs. They generally support tighter regulation of microcorps, with more ties to government ministries. A minority of the party also supports tightening restrictions on drug, alcohol, and food consumption for citizens sleeved in state-provisioned morphs, an idea that even the Social Democrats ﬁnd appalling. Technosocialist Interplanetary This is the ﬁnal struggle Let us group together, and tomorrow The Interplanetary Will be transhumanity —Chorus to L’Interplanétaire The TSI comprises a small but inﬂuential group of voices in the Plurality who favor promoting the Titanian political and economic model in inner system polities (and in some cases, among our anarchist neighbors). Not a fractious youth movement like the A-Bloc or the oligarchs, the TSI has its ﬁeld operatives, but its upper echelons operate as a think tank. While not shying from revolutionary propaganda, its most potent tools are economic simulations, memetic forecasting, and various applications of game theory. Notable members (all of whom were First Settlement colonists) include retired Fleet Sky Marshal Anders Wu, former Minister of Finance and Labor Victoire Gagnon, and Provost Maja Ming Sorenson of Titan Autonomus University (who, in the interest of full disclosure, was my wife for twenty years). Since the Fall, discourse in the Plurality strongly favors social democracy at home and realpolitik abroad. We intervened at Locus out of practical necessity, not out of a desire to spread the Titanian model to other polities. Most Commonwealth citizens would agree that autonomist space is anarchist because anarchism responds best to the economic realities facing widely scattered habitats. They would not be so charitable toward the inner system’s predatory brand of capitalism. Even in the inner system, however, the Commonwealth ﬁnds it can partner with some entities—like the academic consortiums with which we collaborate on solar research. Keeping the peace with the Planetary Consortium, while not an ideal state of affairs, does allow us to reap the beneﬁts of trade and knowledge sharing. The Technosocialist Interplanetary is a minority, but one whose opinions carry much weight. Abroad, the TSI supports dissident groups in the inner system, particularly on Mars. Which groups it supports is a matter of rumor; TSI’s due diligence methodology prior to providing patronage is rigorous, with an eye toward establishing a group’s ability to keep its ties to TSI secret. It also backs microcorps whose activities compete disruptively with inner system hypercorps. TSI members own ten percent of Gatekeeper Corporation, were backers of the failed Scoop project, and invest in icepushing and asteroid mining microcorps that undercut Consortium prices. Not surprisingly, the Planetary Consortium considers the TSI a hostile organization; local groups supported by TSI are often targeted for crackdowns. Close association with the TSI is a fast path to being denied a travel visa to Mars or Mercury, unless one happens to be a diplomat—and the Plurality has been very cautious about appointing anyone from the TSI to a Mars-bound legation in recent years. Lunar and Venusian security forces have yet to deny TSI members entry, but they take a keen interest in their activities. Firewall avoids recruiting from the Interplanetary. The organization’s high proﬁle draws too much attention, both from hostile security forces abroad, and from Titan’s own Security Police, who have had to investigate several assassination attempts on prominent TSI members in recent years. Sidebar: TSI Ties to NAC Microcorps Professor Ming’s right about one thing: the Technosocialist Interplanetary hides its tracks well. Hard to say what they’re up to. I don’t credit the accusations that they’re trying to bring Epimetheus, Janus, and Enceladus into the technosocialist fold. Twelve Commons is no more likely to go for a statist regime than the Trojans, and Enceladus is too closely aligned with Extropia. Maybe if anyone were saying the same about Mimas and Harmonious Anarchy, I’d buy it—but they’re not. More interesting is the persistent rumor that the TSI uses Section Three microcorps associated with the old North Atlantic Consortium to convert TSI supporters’ kroners into credits, whence they’re used to support the Interplanetary’s schemes sunward. If they’re really monkeywrenching the Martians, cool, although misappropriation of state resources by a hyperaged elite exploiting a legal loophole still doesn’t sit well. If it came to light that they were using those resources rimward on anyone other than the Jovians, though, it would be … awkward. —Balthazar Grimes, A-Bloc dissident The Commonwealth Government, AF 10 Because the Titanian constitution requires that all ministers be elected at once, the composition of the Titanian government can turn on a dime. One result of proportional election of ministers is that the two big parties, the Socialists and Social Democrats, tend to focus on holding key ministries like State, Defense, and Justice, while less powerful ministries like Culture tend to go to the minor parties. However, occasional chinks in the shifting coalitions between the Social Democrats, the Socialists, and the Pirat party mean that occasionally a coalition of minor parties voting together can grab a key ministerial post. What follows is one possible conﬁguration for the Titanian cabinet, with Social Democrats holding 40% of the vote (5 posts max), Socialists 30% (4 posts), Pirats 15% (2 posts), A-Bloc 7% (1 post), Mutalists 5% (1 post), and Free Marketeers 3% (1 post). Note that under the Titanian constitution, the elections occurred in the order listed here. To secure the Trade ministry, the Social Democrats put forward no candidate for several of the intervening elections. The Free Market party, though eligible for one cabinet post, could not muster enough votes to secure one. = The Titanian Commonwealth and the Autonomist Alliance = Posted by: Magnus Ming, Proxy I’ve written extensively on Titan and its history and political makeup for Firewall before, so I will simply summarize the most relevant points here. The Titanian Commonwealth is the only hierarchical, government entity among the Autonomist Alliance’s four main factions. Our technosocialist viewpoint simply holds that a cooperative economy—that is under the direct democratic control of the population, mind you—is the best way to manage social ownership of our resources, and that a duly-elected government and judiciary are more efficient for managing and protecting such a system. Make no mistake, like other autonomists, we Titanians have learned to be critical of authority and people in power. That is why the legislative branch of our government is controlled by all of us. Every single Titanian is part of the Plurality, and we each have a vote in the decisions that shape our society. All of our decisions are vigorously discussed and debated in the Plurality’s online public forums, with votes scheduled several times a week. While we do grant authority to the members of the Ministry, our elected executive branch, their operations are conﬁned by the legislative limits the Plurality places upon them. Our ministerial ofﬁcials are more equatable to sanctioned bureaucrats than privileged elites; they are not under the inﬂuence of money or even political party platforms. Like our anarchist and scum allies, Titanians largely share resources and everyone has what they need. The difference is that we do have a monetary system, of sorts. Rather than self-organizing into collectives, co-ops, or syndicates as the anarchists do, we Titanians initiate projects as self-organized microcorps. Any Titanian may petition the Plurality to start a microcorp and ask for resources, measured in kroner. Every Titanian working for a microcorp is “paid” a salary in kroner, but the sole purpose of this social currency is to reinvest in other microcorps and other Commonwealth-backed projects. In effect, the productive activity of our society’s workers, in total, determines the government budget, and each worker then allocates their share of that budget as they see ﬁt. Thus our society’s resource investments are tied directly to the labor and interests of our people. Unlike our allies, we Titanians have laws—and police and courts that enforce them. As our laws are determined by the direct majority vote of our population, however, they serve our people’s interests. We have no rich elites or privileged upper classes to manipulate the legal system and police in support of their agenda. Despite our differences with other autonomists, we stand solidly behind the Alliance’s Points of Unity. The new economy and new society of our rimward alliance is the key to transhumanity’s future; we stand united against the conservative and capitalist interests of the old world. Military Strength The Commonwealth is the only Alliance entity with a standing military. Though our naval forces are small compared to what other polities can ﬁeld, we are certainly capable of playing a decisive role in engagements, as the Second Battle of Locus proved. Though other autonomists are critical of the potential danger of a centralized military force, our populace is understandably cautious about its protection and safety given recent events in transhumanity’s past. Titanian Views on Others We Titanians hold the view that we are the bedrock for transhumanity’s future. The experimentation of the scum and anarchists has its uses, but eventually we need to get down to actually building a popular and progressive future. In the meantime, the bioconservatives, hypercapitalists, and pseudo-fascists pose an imminent threat that we must be vigilant against. Eventually, most likely sooner rather than later, technological progress will force even more changes to their societies, bringing them on par with our own enlightenment.